BINH DUONG, Vietnam– Lego opened up a $1 billion manufacturing facility in Vietnam on Wednesday that it states will certainly make playthings without including planet-warming gas to the ambience by depending totally on tidy power.
The manufacturing facility in the industrial park of Binh Duong, near to Ho Chi Minh City, is the initial in Vietnam that intends to run totally on tidy power. Lego states it will certainly do that by very early 2026.
It’s the Danish firm’s 6th globally and its 2nd in Asia. It will certainly make use of modern tools to generate vivid Lego blocks for Southeast Asia’s expanding markets.
” We simply wish to see to it that the world that the kids acquire when they mature demands to be a world that is still there. That is practical,” Lego chief executive officer Niels Christiansen informed The Associated Press.
The manufacturing facility is a crucial consider Lego’s pursuit to quit including greenhouse gases by 2050. It has a shorter-term target of decreasing exhausts by 37% by 2032. The independently held team makes its blocks out of oil-based plastic and states it has actually spent greater than $1.2 billion in a look for even more lasting options. Yet those efforts have not always been successful.
Fast-industrializing Vietnam likewise intends to attain net-zero exhausts by 2050, so it requires even more of its manufacturing facilities to make use of tidy power. The nation really hopes the plant’s 12,400 photovoltaic panels and power storage space system will certainly aid establish a criterion for even more lasting production.
The blocks are made from in a different way tinted plastic grains that are thawed at heats and after that fed right into steel mold and mildews. The highly-automated manufacturing facility utilizes robotics for making the blocks to a tenth of a hair’s size accuracy and after that product packaging them. It at some point will use hundreds of mainly proficient employees to run these devices, A few of them have actually currently started job after being learnt in Lego’s manufacturing facility in eastern China.
Production comprises a fifth of Vietnam’s GDP and takes in half the power it utilizes. There are strategies to eliminate its coal nuclear power plant by 2040.
The Lego manufacturing facility, which extends 62 football areas, establishes the “plan” for making huge, power-guzzling manufacturing facilities lasting while staying lucrative, stated Mimi Vu, a creator of the working as a consultant Raising Allies in Ho Chi Minh City. “Often it takes a huge firm, like Lego, to take those threats. To reveal that we can do it … And we can be lucrative,” she stated.
The manufacturing facility will certainly take advantage of a brand-new 2024 regulation referred to as a direct power purchase agreement or DPPA, which permits large international business to get tidy power straight from solar and wind power manufacturers and to fulfill their tidy power needs.
The manufacturing facility will certainly be connected to a nearby power facility where electrical power can be kept in huge batteries.
” So also if the sunlight is just beaming throughout the day, we keep the power and can utilize everything over. That will certainly cover without a doubt most of the usage of the manufacturing facility,” included Christiansen,
The staying 10% -20% of the manufacturing facility’s power demands will certainly be satisfied with contracts with various other tidy power manufacturers.
” Lego and Vietnam, we are having the exact same ambitions. We both wish to be environment-friendly, to play our component in the environment. And I assume this with the solar and battery and DPPA, it is showcasing that it can be done,” Jesper Hassellund Mikkelsen, Elder Vice Head Of State Asia Workflow at the LEGO Team informed The AP.
The firm will certainly likewise open up a warehouse in Vietnam’s southerly Dong Nai district to aid offer markets in Australia and various other Eastern nations where it sees a possibility for development. Situating the Lego manufacturing facilities in areas they provide assists to shield them from the tariffs ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, Christiansen stated.
” Now, I am possibly much more watchful of what does this mean to development on the planet? Do we see customer belief altering partly of the globe or otherwise, and what would certainly that possibly imply?” he stated.
The 5 structures in the manufacturing facility fulfill high power effectiveness requirements. Lego likewise has actually grown 50,000 trees– two times the variety of the trees it reduced to clear land for the manufacturing facility. It’s the initial Lego manufacturing facility to change single-use plastic bags with paper bags for product packaging.
Lego’s creator, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, began the firm as a wood plaything manufacturer prior to patenting the legendary plastic blocks in 1958. It is still is looking for a method to make its plastic blocks much more eco-friendly.
Christiansen stated Lego blocks last years and might be recycled, though the inevitably passion is to make them out of even more sustainable products. He stated that a 3rd of the products made use of in Lego blocks made in 2014 were from sustainable and recycled resources. Yet that’s much more costly than plastic constructed of nonrenewable fuel sources.
” It’s not cost-effective at this moment in time, however our company believe if we … lean right into that, we aid develop a supply chain for the kind of plastic products that are not based upon nonrenewable fuel source,” he stated.
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